


I will soon forget the color of your eyes and you'll forget mine

by thefreakfox



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Pre-Stanford, Unrequited Love, Unrequited Wincest, Wincest - Freeform, at least they think it's unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-27
Updated: 2014-03-27
Packaged: 2018-01-17 05:19:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1375237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefreakfox/pseuds/thefreakfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean sighed quietly, opened his fourth beer and took up cleaning his own gun. John had given it to him when he had turned sixteen, and Dean cleaned it almost every evening, even though he barely used it. These moments, when Sam was asleep, and Dean was alone, cleaning his gun, everything seemed simple, and easy. Words weren’t long and complicated then, twisting themselves before they even reached Dean’s tongue; no, at these moments, words came easy to his mind, plain and clear and Dean sometimes wished he could remember them later, when he didn’t know what to say.</p>
<p>The one thing that had never changed in Sam’s life was the love for his brother. Loving his brother had been his one constant in life, the one thing that never wavered or went away.<br/>Maybe that was also the reason he had fallen in love with his brother; because he’d never had to worry about his brother’s love for him. Dean was the one thing he could always rely on, and the knowledge that his big brother would never leave him had helped him growing up strong. Dean had fought for him growing up as a sort-of-normal kid, with time to live in his head, spending hours spinning stories and believing in things like Santa Claus or Angels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I will soon forget the color of your eyes and you'll forget mine

**Author's Note:**

> Title and lyrics belong to Pierce The Veil's "I'm low on gas and you need a jacket".

thanks again to [eierschalenblau](http://www.tumblr.com/eierschalenblau), my beautiful, fantastic beta. Click on her name and visit her on tumblr. And maybe [visit me](http://www.tumblr.com/thefreakfox), too?

* * *

 

 

_You slide into bed while I get drunk_  
Slow conversations with a gun  
Mean more than I've ever said to anyone, anyone

They were somewhere in Louisiana, roughly an hour away from New Orleans. Their dad had successfully hunted down a swamp monster and was off for some celebratory drinks; so Dean and Sam had ended up alone in their motel room.

Sam was nearly eighteen now, and was on the best way of outgrowing his lankiness. It was incredibly hot, but not the dry hotness that was somehow tolerable; but the moist, nasty hotness that crept up your back and soaked everything you wore, from t-shirts to socks. Sam had long given up wearing anything but his boxers, and even Dean had abandoned his shirt for the night. He had thought about undressing even further, leaving jeans and shoes and socks behind, but hadn’t done it. You couldn’t fight properly when you were only in your boxers.

It was hot; and after John had left the room, Dean’s first cold beer had turned into a second, then a third. Sam lay around moaning about the heat, and Dean countered with jokes about his baby brother’s hair. It wasn’t long by normal means, but easily long enough to get a good grab during a fight. It was getting dangerously long for their line of work, but like many things lately, Sam had defied their father and refused to cut it. And John, surprisingly, had given up the fight.

Dean sighed and balanced his chair on the hind legs, swaying sometimes more, sometimes less gracefully. Sam returned from his n-th shower in five hours, now only clad in a towel.

“I’m going to sleep naked,” he declared, flopping down onto the bed.

“No, you’re not. I have to sleep in that bed, too, remember?”

“I don’t care, Dean. It’s way too hot to wear anything. There should be a law against it.”

“Shuddup, Sam. Deal with it.”

Sam shot him a wary look; and Dean winced inwardly. He hadn’t meant to sound so rough, but he hadn’t meant to get drunk, either. He knew that nowadays, he was moody and way more often completely out of line than anything else; but he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t allow himself any softness towards Sam, afraid that it would turn into something more, refusing to admit that it already had.

The more Sam grew up, the more Dean started to recognize things about him; things he shouldn’t actively see as a good big brother. And yet, he had. It tortured him, knowing that he wanted Sam in a way he shouldn’t. It was true that their relationship was something special to begin with; so paying more attention to his brother than normal shouldn’t throw Dean off track. Yeah, he saw how the sunlight glinted in Sam’s eyes and how it reflected off his hair, dousing the brown with blond strands in summertime. He saw how Sam’s hipbones started to jut out, and how his little brother started to wear jeans that slung low on his hips. Together with t-shirts that were notoriously short on Sam because they had belonged to Dean before. Not only girls were magically drawn to staring at Sam. At first, Dean had found excuses. It was pretty obvious that he stared at Sam; after all, his baby brother was pretty much the only thing to look at when they were driving through the country. But that excuse had only worked for so long.

And when Dean had woken up one night, drenched in sweat and rutting into the mattress, he failed to convince himself he had dreamed about a short-haired, long-legged brunette with small breasts. No, he had dreamed about his little brother that slept peacefully only inches away from him. He had known then that he was in deep shit, but maybe the situation could be saved.

Now, a year later, awareness was creeping up on Dean: the situation hadn’t been saved. He was in lust with his brother, maybe even in love. And while the first one was creepy and disgusting, but manageable, the second was undeniably wrong and definitely not manageable. Lust, Dean could handle. He loathed sneaking around until he found a boy or a man to suit his needs, but he dealt with it. But a quick fuck with a shadowed face wouldn’t erase the love out of his body.

Dean tilted the chair forwards, until the forelegs met the floor with a crash. He had to stop thinking about it. If he ignored it, it would (maybe) go away. (No, it wouldn’t.) His dad had put him on cleaning duty again, so Dean grabbed the weapons and started to clean them.

“D’you wanna play cards? I’m bored and it’s too hot to sleep,” Sam had always been good at disturbing silences. Be it at night in a graveyard (various giggle fits because he was nervous) or after a fight with their dad (talking to no one until either Dad or Dean broke down and started talking again).

Now, the disturbance was rather unwelcome.

“Shut up and sleep, Sam. You’ll need it.”

Sam grumbled, but obeyed, wrapping himself in a thin sheet (and ignoring Dean’s command for clothes) and slowly drifting off to sleep. He had yet to learn to sleep without a sheet or a cover of some sort; no matter how hot it was, he always ended up as some sort of sheet-burrito with Sam-filling.

Dean sighed quietly, opened his fourth beer and took up cleaning his own gun. John had given it to him when he had turned sixteen, and Dean cleaned it almost every evening, even though he barely used it. These moments, when Sam was asleep, and Dean was alone, cleaning his gun, everything seemed simple, and easy. Words weren’t long and complicated then, twisting themselves before they even reached Dean’s tongue; no, at these moments, words came easy to his mind, plain and clear and Dean sometimes wished he could remember them later, when he didn’t know what to say.

_I love you._

_I need you._

_Stay. I don’t know why I think you’d ever leave, but please, stay._

_I know they say it’s wrong, but how can it be? I would never hurt you, baby brother. Never._

_Stay with me, stay with me forever and never leave._

_Let’s steal the car and just drive somewhere, anywhere, just don’t let them find us. Let’s go somewhere where nobody knows our name. We don’t need to be brothers then._

_Please, if I ever tell you I love you – please don’t hate me for it._

Dean sighed again and emptied his beer bottle. Maybe he’d go out when his dad returned, but until then, he’d stay at the room, stare at his brother and wish he’d fallen in love with someone else.

 

_But last night, you said you ended up in Palm Springs dancing on tables_  
Almost fought some bitch at the club  
Got kicked out of your hotel and lost your shoes  
Well, fuck, what am I supposed to be, impressed?  
You're just another set of bones to lay to rest  
I guess it’s time to say goodnight. Hope you had a really good time.

 

They were staying in California, this time. Close to Palm Springs, Dean had said. Somehow he seemed fascinated with the idea of the city. So when John had set off again, leaving his sons to their own devices, Dean had climbed into the car and had driven off. Sam had stayed, staring at the motel room wall.

It was hot again, and he thought of the motel room a few weeks back, near New Orleans.

Looking back, it hadn’t been exactly clever (or subtle) to come out only wearing a towel, but it had taken him all his guts. It had taken even more to sleep naked, hoping Dean would get the hint and come to him; but Sam knew he had only a short amount of time left with his brother, and he wanted to use it. He wanted his brother to _know_. It was like an ache in his chest, or a hole he couldn’t fill.

When Sam had woken up during the night, he had seen that Dean had fallen asleep in the chair.

That had been the last straw, Sam told himself. His brother didn’t want him. Maybe he’d only imagined the glances and sighs. And he couldn’t stay when Dean didn’t want him, he just couldn’t. It hurt too much, and Sam knew he wasn’t made to be a hunter, anyway. His admission to Stanford had come a few days ago, Bobby had called him. The law had always fascinated him somehow. Every time there was a show about lawyers on TV, Sam had buggered his dad and Dean until they allowed him to watch it. The fact that a matter of Life and Death could be debatable, just a question of interpretation, intrigued him. Talking could change things just as well (or even better) than violence could.

Dean knew what he was fighting for; he remembered their mom. But for Sam, it was different. Not that he didn’t want to save people – but he wanted to do it in his own way, and for him, that was Law. He knew that Dean and John wouldn’t understand that. For them, Sam didn’t want to be a hunter because they still saw him as a small boy; Dean especially. Sam knew that Dean would never stop seeing him as a his baby brother. But Sam had grown up, too; even though they didn’t seem to realize that. And because of that, they would never accept his choices, because they thought he wasn’t able to make his own decisions.

But Sam wanted something of his own; and at some point during his life, he wanted to have his own family. Their dad hardly acted as though they were a family, Sam felt that ‘drill sergeant’ was more to the point than ‘father’. And Dean – Dean had stopped being family the day Sam fell in love with him; because you didn’t want to fuck family.

He had hoped that one day, Dean and he could have their own sort of family. As lovers, not brothers. But that had been a foolish dream, it seemed. Dean saw him as his baby brother, and that meant he couldn’t ever be a thing more to him. And while that wasn’t too bad, it wasn’t what Sam wanted. A relationship with Dean would be something of his own, a choice he had made and by which he wanted to stand.

He desperately needed that; he needed something that only belonged to him. Something that no one had planted in his head or had told him to do. Sometimes, Sam wasn’t sure who he actually was.

As a child, he had been vicious sometimes. He’d told himself he only acted out when others were concerned, when he wanted to help a kid that was bullied; but he knew that he’d also liked it somehow. Beating up a bullying jerk had made him feel powerful, like he had control over some part of his life, when the other parts were so uncontrolled. And he’d been mean, too. And while he found excuses for his violence (his dad’s training, temper running high, he hadn’t attacked, he’d only defended himself), Sam had never been able to find an excuse for his mean streak.

And both together – violence and meanness – made Sam scared of himself. Because when Dean looked at him, Sam wanted to be a good person, a good man. Dean didn’t think he was able to do something bad, so Sam tried to match the image Dean had of him. But just as violence wasn’t who he was, he wasn’t pure goodness, either.

The one thing that had never changed in Sam’s life was the love for his brother. Sure, the intensity had changed, and the kind of love had, too; but loving his brother had been his one constant in life, the one thing that never wavered or went away.

Maybe that was also the reason he had fallen in love with his brother; because he’d never had to worry about his brother’s love for him. Dean was the one thing he could always rely on, and the knowledge that his big brother would never leave him had helped him growing up strong. Dean had fought for him growing up as a sort-of-normal kid, with time to live in his head, spending hours spinning stories and believing in things like Santa Claus or Angels.

But now, all of that didn’t matter anymore. It didn’t matter why he had fallen in love with Dean, or the mere fact that he had. Because Dean not loving him back meant that his last constant, the one thing he had never had to control, had disappeared and become meaningless like a motel’s name.

So he would go. Leave his brother behind (sometimes it felt like he had already left his dad, so that didn’t matter really) and just go.

When Dean didn’t return during the night, Sam called him.

“Where are you, dude?”

“’m at some hotel. They threw me out because I got in a fight. My shoes are gone. I don’t know, man. I forgot where I put Baby.”

Before Dean could say anything else, Sam hung up and threw the phone at the wall.

He wasn’t quite sure what he’d expected. When he’d been younger, each and every one of Dean’s antics had fascinated him. The adventures of his older brother had been the most interesting thing to happen at all times, and Sam had suffered from a serious case of older brother- hero- worship. Dean opened a bottle of beer, and Sam was impressed. Dean flirted with a girl, and Sam was impressed (later, Sam was pissed when he did that). Rebelling against their father and leaving the motel room to go somewhere else would definitely have impressed him, but now it didn’t, not anymore.

Sam knew that Dean would never love him, because he loved booze and boobs and Baby more than him. It was better for everyone, Sam told himself. There wasn’t much that made him stay anymore, anyway. He’d just get over Dean (he would never forget him, of that he was sure), and that was it. If he got used to the idea of not loving Dean, and if he wasn’t near him, it would surely go away, why shouldn’t it? The feelings would just stop being there one day, and then everything would be okay.

He wasn’t much use anyway, for no one. He felt sympathy for some monsters they killed, because some of them might have looked monstrous, but not always was it their fault they had turned out that way. John never saw the grey stripes in his black and white world, but Sam did. That’d be over, too – the endless fights and discussions, over anything and nothing. Sam looked almost forward to it.

It felt funny, Sam realized when he packed his bag. Leaving. It was a peculiar concept, especially because ‘staying’ for the Winchesters had only ever denoted ‘sleeping more than one night in the same room’ it had never meant ‘home’. So in turn, ‘leaving’ had lost a lot of it substance, because, technically speaking, they were always leaving. But now, he actually was leaving something – someone – behind; and suddenly ‘leaving’ meant something.

He’d save a lot of money, Sam told himself, leaving now. He was already in California, so he didn’t have to travel through the whole country to get to Stanford. As he shouldered his bag and closed the motel room door behind him, he was smiling.

But still, it felt funny – saying goodbye to no one.


End file.
